Child’s Jumpsuit

Give peace a chance

Opposition to American involvement in the Vietnam War began with small demonstrations on college campuses in 1964. By the end of the decade, anti-war sentiment had grown into a broad social movement that sparked a counterculture revolution.

This toddler’s jumpsuit from the early 1970s is a product of that counterculture revolution in which large numbers of young people rejected the conventional social norms of their parents and instead agitated for the ideals of peace, love, harmony, and equality. We don’t know who owned it or wore it, but we can infer that the mother who dressed her child in this jumpsuit clearly wanted to make a statement that the country’s future – its children – was making a break with the values of older generations.